June 27, 2013

Analysis of Maikop crania (Kazarnitsky 2010)

From the paper, first a survey of other studies:

The Maikop cranium from Mandzhikiny I in Kalmykia was
measured by A.A. Khokhlov. In his view, it resembles the previously published
Maikop and Novosvobodnaya specimens. Khokhlov pointed to certain features common
to the Maikop and Novosvobodnaya people and opposing them to the Pit Grave
people. He questioned the resemblance between the Maikop crania from Evdyk I and
those from Syezzheye and Zadono-Avilovsky; and he believed the former to
resemble crania from the Caucasus, the Near East, and Southwestern Central
Asia, being closest to those from Samtavro, Georgia, and Ginchi, Dagestan
(Khokhlov, 2002).

In a brief note, M.M Gerasimova, D.V. Pezhemsky, and L.T.
Yablonsky (2002) described several Maikop crania from burial grounds on the
Kalaus River in the Stavropol Region. The series is diverse and, judging by the
results of multivariate analysis, is closest to the Chalcolithic group from
Khvalynsk in the Samara Region.

T.I. Alekseyeva (2004) measured a male skull from mound 13
burial 5 at Nezhinskaya near Kislovodsk (the plastic reconstruction of this
individual’s appearance was made by L.T. Yablonsky), as well as two crania
(male and female) from mound 70 burial 1 at Zamankul in Northern Ossetia. All
these crania came from “Maikop– Novosvobodnaya” burials and were attributed to
the Mediterranean variety of the Southern Caucasoid type which was distributed
in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, and Mesopotamia during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze
Age. The heterogeneity of the Maikop group in Alexeyeva’s opinion may be due to
individual variability, but also to admixture with the natives of the
southeastern European steppes (Alekseyeva, 2004).

Later, Gerasimova, Pezhemsky, and Yablonsky (2007) published
a large article where crania from burial grounds on the Kalaus River were
described in detail. They noted that the Maikop series is heterogeneous but on
average it represented the Eastern Mediterranean trait combination. The latter
is quite dissimilar to the Cromagnoid combination typical of certain Bronze Age
groups of the Eastern European steppes. The idea that at least some Maikop
people were descendants of immigrants from the Near East was deemed probable;
however the role of the steppe admixture, possibly accounting for a somewhat
greater robustness of Maikop crania compared to Mediterranean ones, was not
excluded either.

And the author's own conclusions:

In sum, the results of the multivariate analysis suggest that
Maikop people are distinct from all the contemporary and later Eastern European
groups of the steppe and forest-steppe zones. This provides an additional
argument in favor of the hypothesis that Maikop burials in Kalmykia attest not
merely to the cultural impact of the Maikop community on the steppe tribes
(Munchaev, 1994: 168); rather, they were left by a separate group which was unrelated
to the local Pit Grave population by origin. The Southern Caucasoid trait
combination revealed by the Maikop series is somewhat similar to that shown by
the contemporaneous groups of the Northern Caucasus and southern Turkmenia.
Clearly, this does not imply a direct connection with any of these regions.

The Near Eastern parallels are no less suggestive (Bunak,
1947: 77). Thus, a small series from Al-Ubaid in southern Mesopotamia, dating
from the 4th millennium BC, is characterized by dolichocrany (cranial index, 72.6),
a high face, medium wide, high and sharply protruding nose, and wide palate
(Keith, 1931: 239–241). Regrettably, the number of measurements is too small to
warrant a reliable comparison with the Maikop series. However, the isolated
position of the Maikop group in Eastern Europe, its vague resemblance to the
Southern Caucasoids of the Caucasus and Southwestern Central Asia, and the Near
Eastern cultural affinities of Maikop and Novosvobodnaya (Munchaev, 1994: 170)
indirectly point to Near Eastern provenance.

It would certainly be interesting to obtain DNA from some of these specimens.

Abstract
Measurements of crania of people associated with the Early Bronze Age Maikop culture of the Northern Caucasus are analyzed. Data on Maikop males, new and previously published, were compared with those concerning chronologically and geographically related people using the canonical variate analysis. The Maikop series turned out to be isolated and no close parallels to it were found among the Bronze Age groups, either from the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe or from the Caucasus and Southwestern Central Asia. While certain parallels seem to point to the Near East, they are too few to warrant definite conclusions.

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